USAID Advancing Nutrition develops, curates, packages, and shares multi-sectoral nutrition knowledge to help you stay on top of developments and evidence in global nutrition programming.
This newsletter critiques the global industrial food system, argues for greater food sovereignty, and discusses the importance of democratizing food systems and engaging young people in this work.
Transforming Food Systems in Kenya for a New Era of Growth and Prosperity: Research-Based Recommendations for the New Government
Publication Date:
Food SystemsFood SystemsGender
This brief offers recommendations to the new Kenyan government, including allocating sufficient funding, building policy coherence, strengthening the science-policy interface, and broadening the focus from a food security to a food systems approach.
The Impact of Climate Change on Food Safety and Implications for Development Programming
Publication Date:
Food SystemsFood SafetyFood SystemsResilienceWater, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH)
Designing climate-resilient food safety programs requires identifying which climate phenomena are most likely to become prominent. It also requires assessing regional changes in foodborne hazard occurrence and transport, changes in behaviors and practices to cope with climate impacts on food safety, and food system resilience through a food safety lens.
Generating Demand for Healthy Diets: A Guide to Social Marketing in Nutrition
Publication Date:
Food SystemsFood SafetyFood Systems
This guide provides practical advice, examples, and resources for planning and executing a successful social marketing campaign to improve nutrition outcomes.
Building Forward Better—An Exploration of Nutrition Practices, Food Choice, and Coping Behaviors Among Kenyan Adolescents During COVID-19: Experiences and Program Implications
Publication Date:
Food SystemsAdolescent NutritionCOVID-19Food Systems
Adolescents in Kenya skipped meals and reduced the amount and variety of foods consumed during the COVID-19 pandemic and reported working in the informal sector and selling personal items to support their families.
Is Infant and Young Child-feeding (IYCF) a Potential Double-Duty Strategy to Prevent the Double Burden of Malnutrition among Children at the Critical Age? Evidence of Association from Urban Slums in Pune, Maharashtra, India
Publication Date:
Nutrition in Humanitarian ContextsWastingBreastfeedingComplementary FeedingInfant and Young Child Nutrition (IYCN)
This study finds that boys in India had higher rates of stunting and wasting, and bottle feeding increased the odds of wasting, severe stunting, underweight, and obesity. Bottle feeding increased the odds of wasting and severe stunting, and delaying the introduction of complementary feeding increased the odds of severe stunting. Child minimum dietary standards were rarely achieved.
Global Report on Health Equity for Persons with Disabilities
Publication Date:
Early Childhood DevelopmentKnowledge Management
The report documents evidence of health inequities and country experiences advancing health equity, and provides recommendations to health sector decision-makers for country-level action.
Chronic Iron Deficiency and Cognitive Function in Early Childhood
Publication Date:
Early Childhood DevelopmentMicronutrient Interventions
After receiving oral iron, children with chronic iron deficiency demonstrated improved iron status, but continued to have lower cognitive scores compared with children with initial iron sufficiency. Future research could examine outcomes of a screening strategy for the early detection of iron deficiency using serum ferritin. This article is behind a paywall.
Improving Food Systems in Secondary Cities, What Can Be Accomplished Through Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration?
Publication Date:
Capacity StrengtheningFood Systems
Multi-stakeholder platforms that include researchers, policymakers, farmers, and small-scale processors provide significant support for the functionality and increased sustainability of food systems. The report discusses next steps to improve governance and explores novel mixed-farming methods to encourage more diverse diets.
Guidance for the Use of Standard and Non-Standard Recipes in Quantitative 24-Hour Dietary Recall Surveys: The Simple Ingredient Method
Publication Date:
Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning
Authors recommend a simplified calculation method for mixed dishes that allows for disaggregating recipe data to the ingredient level. Identifying ingredient proportions requires collecting or estimating the quantity of each ingredient used and the amount in the prepared mixed dish. Survey planners must explore the pros and cons of collecting standard or nonstandard recipe data.
Identifying and Interrupting Fecal-Oral Pathways in Young Children
Publication Date:
Knowledge ManagementChild NutritionInfant and Young Child Nutrition (IYCN)Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH)
This guide helps Resilience Food Security Activity implementing partners determine whether they need to conduct research to identify and prioritize fecal-oral pathways for infants and young children. It provides guidance about how to design formative research activities and explores appropriate data collection methods for measuring the effectiveness of interventions.
The Local Capacity Strengthening Policy provides a cohesive, global approach to guide USAID decisions about why and how to invest in the capacity of local partners.
Generating Demand for Healthy Diets: A Guide to Social Marketing in Nutrition
Publication Date:
Food SystemsConsumer Demand for Healthy DietsFood Systems
This guide supports nutrition program planners by defining, describing, and explaining the process of developing high-quality programs to market healthy diets. This knowledge enables teams to make informed marketing decisions, create strong marketing campaigns, and diagnose and solve marketing challenges. The guide is grounded in real-world experiences.
Mapping and Gap Analysis of Tools for Complementary Feeding in Emergencies
Publication Date:
Nutrition in Humanitarian ContextsImproving Women and Children’s Diets in Emergency ContextsComplementary FeedingEmergency NutritionFood AssistanceInfant and Young Child Nutrition (IYCN)Wasting
Recognizing the importance of protecting, maintaining, and potentially improving the diets of children under the age of two, there has been an increased focus on supporting infant and young child feeding in emergency contexts in recent years.
Bringing New Evidence on Undernutrition and Mortality Risk Into Practice
Publication Date:
Early Childhood DevelopmentEmergency Nutrition
This study aims to test whether weight-for-age (WFA) and MUAC can be effectively utilised in existing programmes to capture these children with single and dual deficits and reach considerably more children at a high risk of death.